Home Grown School Feeding The Partnership for Child Development (PCD) based at Imperial College London, has launched a new initiative that will support government action to deliver cost effective school feeding programmes sourced from local farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. The project will engage with a wide range of stakeholders to promote agricultural development by using locally-produced food for school feeding - providing regular orders and a reliable income for smallholder farmers, whilst also improving the education, health, and nutrition of local children. With PCD acting as the lead co-ordinator, the initial five year programme will provide direct, evidence-based and context-specific support and expertise to governments to design and manage school feeding programmes sourced with local agricultural production.
School Feeding: A social safety net The current food, fuel and financial crises have highlighted the importance of school feeding programs both as a social safety net for children living in poverty and food insecurity, and as part of national educational policies and plans. Appropriately designed school feeding programmes have been shown to increase access to education and learning, and improve children’s health and nutrition, especially when integrated into comprehensive school health and nutrition programmes (Bundy et al 2009).
Engendering national and local ownership The initiative is driven by the New Partnership for Africa’s Development’s (NEPAD) vision for nationally owned, sustainable programmes aimed at improving the food security of small holder farmers, many of whom are women. The project will examine country readiness and key operational trade-offs, benchmarks, and good practice, analysing how Home Grown School Feeding (HGSF) can most effectively stimulate local agricultural production, boost local and regional food production and create jobs and profitmaking opportunities in rural communities. Through the funding provided by this grant and matching funds mobilized for support to homegrown school feeding in at least 10 sub-Saharan countries, PCD anticipate that by 2014 the project activities will have contributed to the following goals: • • •
Improving small holder farmer income through structuring market demand from HGSF programs. Improving nutritional status, nutrition quality and quantity amongst small holder farmers. Improving education, health and nutrition of school age children through sustainable and costeffective school feeding programs.
There are three main focus areas: 1. The current state of HGSF - Why is it implemented, how is it funded, how is it positioned in the political and administrative framework in the country, what are the capacity gaps and bottlenecks encountered at the country level, how is it governed, and what is needed to improve the quality of the programmes on the ground?
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2. Strengthening partnerships and coalitions for in-country driven HGSF Promoting the cooperation and coordination between the wide range of stakeholders, including the recipient countries, donors, implementing agencies and the private sector; 3. Strengthening the current knowledge base - Review of existing evidence base (including gaps and priorities), develop planning and monitoring and evaluation tools, and disseminating examples of best practices.
Linking school feeding with agricultural development To enable the multi-sectoral approach which is vital to the success of HGSF, the project has established an Agricultural Technical Consortia (ATC) which includes international and regional experts to provide guidance, technical support and in-country partnerships on agricultural development and food security issues. The ATC's work will be driven by country teams active in the initial five pilot countries (Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Malawi and Mali). The group's aim will be to ramp-up country level activities and feed their findings into the development of a general HGSF monitoring and evaluation (M&E) framework.
Developing the M&E framework A key objective of the project is to build an analytical framework to evaluate HGSF programmes, following a standard programme evaluation approach. The approach first sets out to describe the needs of the programme and the characteristics of the target population, and then develops some of the programme theory for HGSF, covering both impact and process dimensions. The framework and associated activities will be used to facilitate an in-depth analysis of the specific context in which HGSF is to be implemented and evaluated.
The Partnership for Child Development Since the creation of PCD in 1992, it has been at the forefront of harmonizing multi-sectoral efforts to enable low-income countries to implement effective, scaled, and sustainable school health and nutrition programmes. PCD currently works with over 50 countries (37 of which are in SSA) and over 100 development partners at international, regional, sub-regional and country levels. In recent years, 75% of these SSA countries have successfully transitioned to government owned, funded and implemented programmes. PCD will build upon this experience and success to create an enabling environment to bring together all key stakeholders to determine the economic, educational, and social benefits of HGSF and work together to develop effective and sustainable programmes. For more information on schools, health and nutrition and on the work of PCD visit www.schoolsandhealth.org or www.child-development.org
Further HGSF reading Bundy DAP, Burbano C, Grosh M, Gelli A, Jukes M and Drake L. 2009. “Rethinking School Feeding: Social Safety Nets, Child Development and the Education Sector”. Directions in Development, World Bank, Washington DC. Espejo F, Burbano C, & Galliano E. 2009. “Home-grown school feeding: A framework for action”. United Nations World Food Programme, Rome
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